Man of Action may not be a household name for all but the cartoon enthusiasts and diehards, but Ben 10 certainly should be. The animated series centering on 10-year-old Ben Tennyson, who discovers an alien watch that grants him amazing powers, has gone on to become a multi-billion dollar franchise since its debut in 2005. Sequels to the original series saw Ben aging along with his viewing audience while taking on more mature storytelling aspects and character relationships. Now, a new rebooted series makes Ben ten again, giving Man of Action somewhat of a blank slate to tell the 10-year-old's stories and a chance to discover a whole new generation of fans.

Man of Action, comprised of Duncan Rouleau, Joe Kelly and Steven T. Seagle (along with Joe Casey who unfortunately wasn't available for this interview) took time out of their insane schedules to chat with us about all things Ben 10. The conversation also veered into comic book territory and that of Man of Action's other TV and movie projects, but we'll bring that to you in an upcoming article. Today, Ben 10 fans new and old will definitely want to read on to see what Man of Action had to say about the show's past, present, and future.

Before we get to our chat with Man of Action, here's an exclusive clip from tomorrow's upcoming episode that acts as a solid introduction for new viewers and a fun moment for longtime fans:

To start things off, I wanted to know just when the Man of Action team knew Ben 10 had become a bonafide hit:

Steven T. Seagle: The show had premiered in the US and it was doing well, pretty well, but it wasn't a runaway monster hit, and I went on a trip with my wife to Scandinavia, and I remember this moment very clearly. We were on an overnight ferry between countries and I went to the duty free shop and they had toys in the duty free shop on a boat between Finland and Estonia. And I was like, "This is weird. It must be bigger than I think."

Joe Kelly: Mine is so much less exotic than that. I was in the supermarket and saw that a Chef Boyardee can of SpaghettiOs. And I was like, "Wow, we must be a hit." Not at all as cool as Steve, but, you know.

Duncan Rouleau: That's when you know you have gone deep, when you start showing up on pasta.

Steven T. Seagle: I'll close off the licensing phenomenon for Ben 10 by saying we got the report that there was a Ben 10 roller coaster in the UK and that was pretty awesome.

Duncan Rouleau: Or the Monster Truck rally.

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Image via Man of Action

How did the decision come about to reboot the character and the series rather than continuing with where you had left off in Ben 10: Omniverse

Steven T. Seagle: The show has always rebooted. It's funny that people, some of the older fans are up in arms that it's rebooting. But it's rebooted almost every two or three years for its entire life. It's just that this time we decided we would look back to when he was 10 because we want to find the new generation of fans for the show. I think our fans who were seven, eight, nine years old when it started are 20, 21, 22 years ago now. And they're moving on, they're going to college, they're getting married, all that kind of stuff. And we just needed to find the show that would make the new seven, eight, nine year olds kind of go, "Ben 10! That's my hero!" That was probably the biggest reason why we started to start back at 10.

Duncan Rouleau: Just to follow up on that, because that's exactly right. But we also had a lingering feeling that we had moved away from his 10-year-old-ness too soon. There were still a lot of stories to tell during that time period. That was an aspect of the character. And also given his relationship with Gwen and Max, we felt like there were still a lot of stories to be told in that time period. That was another creative impetus as well.

How has the reception been to the newest version of Ben 10, both from the previous fans and then from fans who may be watching this for the first time?

Joe Kelly: As far as I can tell, kids are loving it. The show audience for the younger generation is really loving the show, from a rating perspective, scoring extremely well, and it's been kicking around the globe at a rapid clip. So that's been great. And we’ve been really, really excited about that. And then I certainty heard plenty of older fans going, "Okay. The is new for me, but I want to give it a shot."

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Image via Man of Action Entertainment

Steven Seagle: We've done this a lot. We rebooted Spider-Man, there have been other Ben 10 reboots. We're working on a Japanese show that we worked on previously. And the problem has always been, you love the thing you love. It's just like with music. I loved The Police when The Police were in their heyday. I wanted the new Police album to be just like the Police album I bought last time. So for The Police to be good, they have to evolve, they had to become a different band. And you resist that at first, then you listen to it, you go, "Oh, this is still The Police, they just went somewhere new." I think we're still in that phase with Ben 10, because these are still Ben 10 stories, they're not Teen Titans Go stories, they're Ben adventures just like they've always been. The kid with a watch that he doesn't know what to do with, he gets the wrong alien for the right moment. He's up against big bad guys, you know there's jokes, there's drama, there's action. That is all the same elements and it'll just take people a while to get used to the surface, which looks a little different.

Duncan Rouleau: Everything you said, completely agree with, the only experience that I've had that I would add to what's already been said is that with the younger kids, the audience that are about seven to eight to nine, they have a very different way than 10 years ago kids would watch a program. And so we've also added another whole aspect of a second screen kind of stuff. That's going to start coming out. And I’m very excited to see the reaction that's going to come from that.

Sometimes you just have a feeling that it's going to be very positive feedback. All your instincts are telling you that. And with the preliminaries of showing this, to just some small or select audiences of the second screen stuff, it's going to add another whole dimension to the show that's airing on Cartoon Network right now. It’s its own unique experience and I wouldn't be surprised that the younger fans that are already enjoying the show this is going to be their kind of flag where they can go this is ours to for the second screen stuff. But I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more older, skeptical fans of the property are going to really fall in love with some of those elements as well. We're in kind of a new place, so as far as how media is consumed, and it's gonna be a little while to see how some of this stuff shakes itself out but I think the second screen stuff is also going to be a huge factor.

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Image via Cartoon Network

That's really interesting because the technology just wasn't there when Ben 10 came out in 2005. So can you talk a little bit more about how that advance in technology has given you more flexibility with getting this new version to more viewers?

Steven Seagle: One thing I would say right off the bat is it changed the way we have to tell the story. I think previous versions were very linear and narrative-based and would build over time. Because kids are getting stuff from so many different platforms and different ways, and different kind of amounts of watching, we've had to really build a giant world and carve out pieces of it and say here are some pieces. We know how they all fit together. I think what Duncan's getting at is when you see how all this stuff fits together, it's really cool, it's all stuff you knew, it's stuff you never knew before about Ben 10, it's just that the way it gets parsed out is radically different and so the way you have the whole story is different.

It's part of the reason we went from 22 minutes to 11 minutes. Because it gives us a lot more real estate to cover the ground we want to cover in the much bigger tapestry we're trying to build over something we've known and loved for years.

Is there an overarching kind of narrative to this story? Do you guys have long-term plans, or are you more focused on episodic, short-form segments?

Joe Kelly: Anything that we're working on, we build with both the individual episode in mind and then kind of an overarching thematic arc. We don't do very tight episodic storytelling at the moment, that's what people are looking for in what we're doing. But we love a payoff for a fan who's been sticking with the series for the whole run of it. So there's definitely longer-form stories that sort of drop in during the course of the season and then you get a big payoff in the end. And that also crosses in some of this second screen stuff that we're talking about.

Steven Seagle: One of our big creative challenges and the reason why this is still fun for us to do is previously we would map out a big epic story and then just tell it in order. And in this new way that people watch and consume stuff, we've had to map out that big story and it's more like throwing the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle up and they're all gonna land at the same time. It's like, can we make it land that way? We can, so far there's so many cool things that, like Joe said, pay off for people who watch all the episodes but for kids who just watch one or catch it on the phone or whatever, that episode still has to be great and great fun. So it's tough doing both of those things at the same time. It’s tricky, but I think we've got it.

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Image via Cartoon Network

Duncan Rouleau: I think the best way of kind of looking at it is if any particular episode or piece, the further that you kind of stand up and look at all of it, and it's gonna be how you chose to consume it, however at your pace, at looking or exploring the stuff. The further that you step out, you're going to start to see that much bigger kind of image. You're see of totality and a lot of the mythology and all of the things we've been putting out, we've been putting in small little pieces.

We're just making sure that if you're interested in doing kind of the work of following along, a lot of fans are, that something that's very fun for a fan is to explore this. You find out these little details here and there, and you start putting it all together, you have a sense of ownership of it as well. And I think of that as something we were hoping to come out and give that experience as well. So it's a much, much bigger kind of scope of storytelling. You take these little pastiches that create a bigger image.

Steven Seagle: Just to say, again we have a totally new audience, so another balancing act is just that the old fans know a lot of the mythology and stuff, but we have to write a series for kids who have never heard of it or never seen it, and reveal it to them in a new way.

I had a chance to talk to Tara Strong a few weeks back and she mentioned that she had to come in and re-audition for the part which kinda surprised me a little bit. I was wondering if you guys had talked about maybe bringing in a totally new voice cast. What was that process like?

Steven Seagle: To be extremely clear, we always thought it was gonna be Tara. The one question we had was, could a kid be Ben? We were really interested in very young voices. And that's the only reason Tara came back in, was to remind us of what she is and what she does. As soon as we heard that, we were like, "No, it can't be a kid, it has to be Tara."

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Image via Cartoon Network

That was it. But we did wind up casting some of the kids who auditioned or Ben as other characters in the show, like Gunnar Sizemore, who played Billy Billions, for example, our new Gwen who is Montse Hernandez who was young but super talented. It was really just that, can we infuse a youthfulness to it. Tara is eternally youthful. She was always our top.

Strong also mentioned Yuri Lowenthal, who voiced the older version of Ben Tennyson, as coming back in to do some villainous voices, too. Do you have any plans toward aging Ben and his family members up again and taking this new generation along with Ben as they age?

Steven Seagle: Tara's being very kind and kind of mysterious. And Yuri's a regular on the show, but who he is playing is unbelievable compared to who he used to play. That's all I can say about it at the moment. But it was all completely by design. And when you find out and then the fans find out, they're going to be enthralled and livid over who Yuri is.

Joe Kelly: Ben's future, we're already many, many years ahead in our brains as to what's happening with Ben, compared to what people are seeing already on TV. I would no say that the door's closed on that but I would say, like Duncan said before, there's so many stories and we love him at this age where he's just so impetuous and had so much to learn and can really screw up and is such a smart aleck. We want to spend a lot more time with him as a 10 year ago. And it's just a lot of fun for us. So at the moment that's where we're focused.

Duncan Rouleau: The most accurate answer is yeah we do have plans for it but whether or not we'll be able to accomplish everything in a timely fashion, that's gonna be up to how successful we are at this stage.

Are there any new transformations and new abilities that are coming up soon that you can tease?

Steven Seagle: We started with just back to basics. My dad, who is 83 years old, back when the first series was on, was so mad when Ben turned into the 11th alien. He was like, "Your character just turned into 11! He’s Ben 10!" And so we've kept Jack Seagle's words at heart and really pared down and focused on who is Ben, who is 10 aliens, what does he do?

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Image via Cartoon Network

That said, half the fun is figuring out what comes next. So yes, there are more things afoot. A lot more things afoot, in some ways. Some of them show up in this first season, some in the second. People just need to go along for the ride and rest assured that if you have an alien watch full of alien DNA, there’s probably more than 10. But for us, that's just Ben 10, he turns into things.

Duncan Rouleau: This is our guy and it's a deep rich universe out there full of aliens. So I think that we aren't going to meet some of them that we haven't met before. That would just be wrong of us.

Look for the new Ben 10 weekdays starting at 5pm on Cartoon Network!

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